"Every action has a reaction in the same strength from the opposite direction," said Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, whose organization has been responsible for numerous violent attacks on Israelis. "Hamas was never weakened by being hit. It gives Hamas more strength and power. No one has declared that (our) actions have stopped."

Hamas still represents the biggest single threat to the continuation of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but as Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan and even Syria make it increasingly harder for the militants' military wing to operate, Hamas is finding itself squeezed on all sides like never before.

"I think in general what we're seeing here is the tide is turning against the rejectionists" of peace, said a State Department official. "It's a sign that people are getting on the bandwagon. Those staying on the outside are finding the company thinner and thinner."

King Abdullah II of Jordan's decision late last month to issue the arrest warrants of the three senior Hamas figures when they were out of the country signaled the effective end of Hamas' operations in Jordan, a strategic location for the organization to orchestrate attacks on Israel.

With Syrian President Hafez Assad making it clear to Hamas that it can only use Damascus as a political and not military base, diplomatic sources say, and with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat stamping down hard on the military wing of Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, the group's main traditional bases of operation have turned into unfriendly territory.

For years, Hamas operated with impunity inside Jordan under the reign of the late King Hussein. Two things appear to have altered the relationship between the radicals and the palace.

Some Jordanian officials have said that Hamas was trying to recruit members from the Islamic Brotherhood, the Muslim fundamentalist party in Jordan that is tolerated by the regime.

That and an amassing of weaponry were seen as a breaking of the rules. "It was the training, the arms and the question of the Muslim Brotherhood," a senior palace official said.

But some observers believe the new king also wanted to send a very public message to Israel and the United States that Jordan would no longer provide shelter to an organization determined to wreck the peace process.

Yassin insists that the young king only cracked down on the Hamas leaders, who were arrested when they flew back to the country, because of political pressure from Israel and the United States.

"The incident in Jordan is considered as a new wave of confronting Hamas by American pressure," said senior Hamas official Ismaeel Abu Shanab, a former prisoner.

"We know it's the Americans who are behind all these things, maybe pushed by the Palestinian Authority and Israel, to besiege Hamas."

The palace official said the king acted without pressure from Israel or the United States.

Radwan Abdullah, a Jordanian political analyst, said the king was also making another kind of statement -- about his strength. "He has established himself more firmly now, in case anybody thought he was weak," Abdullah said.

While Yassin's veiled threats may hint at retaliation within Jordan, Hamas' potential to destabilize the king is considered negligible. King Hussein was forced into all-out warfare against Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization in the "Black September" of 1970, but Hamas would be no match for Jordanian security forces.

One of the Hamas leaders was quickly deported after arriving in Amman while the other two, who are Jordanian citizens, are due to stand trial. Radwan Abdullah expects the courts to impose stiff sentences and the king to pardon the men as a gesture of conciliation with Hamas.

The palace's self-assurance in the face of Hamas' fury at the arrests says as much about the state of Hamas as it does for the confident new king.

Of course, Hamas needs to speak only a few times -- with bombs -- to bring peace negotiations to a sudden halt.

"There's always that possibility," the State Department official said. "(Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Barak has made it quite clear that terror attacks would end negotiations."